


My dear, dark child I've been waiting for you

by Climberslife101



Category: Carol (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Carol's a Vampire Guys, F/F, Human/Vampire Relationship, Soulmates, bloodbound, but there'll be a happy ending I promise!, shit gets dark real quick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:35:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26827456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Climberslife101/pseuds/Climberslife101
Summary: When her abusive mother finally goes too far, shy eighteen-year-old Therese Believe finds that her saviour is far from an angel. Lost and alone she is completely enraptured by the beautiful but murderous, Carol. Taken on an adventure by the vampire's well-intentioned sister, Therese is drawn into Vires, a dark and dangerous vampire world, where humans are little more than natural resources to be exploited.In a society that has been turned upside down while learning to live inside its constraints, Caroline Aird may not be much more than a slave to a power-hungry Government and the violent bloodlust that consumes her may be all her own. Before she loses herself in a world unlike anything she has ever known, Therese needs to find Carol and the answers to those questions.(From the novel Blood echo L.E. Royal)
Relationships: Carol Aird/Therese Belivet
Comments: 14
Kudos: 55





	1. The beginning

**Author's Note:**

> (Just for a little insight) The title 'My dear, dark child I've been waiting for you' is quoted from Marlon Williams song 'Dark Child'. Its a hauntingly beautiful piece that resonates well with in this story and as a fellow kiwi my self, I'm always super proud to show off some New Zealand talent so defiantly recommend checking it out!

**BLOOD. THERE WAS SO** much blood. It tasted metallic and sticky as it flooded my mouth. My back was uncomfortably warm, wet, and screaming in agony. A high-pitched sound filled the air, piercing, shaking me to the centre of myself. My frantic green eyes searched through spinning space, looking for her. My mother

She was swaying three steps up our staircase, drunk on her beloved infusion of cheap apple cider and vodka that smelled like drain cleaner on her breath. She was coming closer each foot came to the next step as if the collision of shoe and carpet wasn't entirely anticipated. The siren kept on wailing. I searched her eyes, so similar to my own, for any of the fear I felt, anything to signify that she too knew, this time, she really had gone too far. I saw nothing.

The panic settling over me was ice cold and heavy, crushing down on my chest. Warm wetness was all around me. Only when the siren stopped, and I sucked in a deep and frantic breath that sent white-hot pain shooting through my torso, did I realize I had been screaming. Lying there, my body strewn across the entryway of the house where I grew up, I considered that I’d never thought much about death. Bleeding at the bottom of the stairs, my mother staggering toward me to either save me or hurt me more, I wished I had. That’s what I told myself as the edges of my vision began to bleed, the colours mixing together and fading out. My mother’s expressionless face swam into focus as she stared down at me. She almost looked sorry.

> _“Stop looking at me that way, Antoni! You left…”_

The words drifted to my ears like I was hearing them from miles away, through a thick-fogged glass of space, time, and pain.

> _"You left me! You left us… You left us behind… So don’t you dare…”_

I was dragged back to myself, back to the agonizing sting where the cool air hit the gashes in my skin as, with a wet thwack, a glob of mother’s spit landed on my cheek. She’s going to kill me. The thought spun in my head, a carousel doomed to run endlessly. I tried to find the words to tell her I wasn’t my father; he’d left us both in the ingestions of his car, the day he decided he was to thirsty to pore water on his own seed and left my mother behind to do the job instead. This was how I would die, after thirteen years of watching the woman who had raised me sink further and further into an abyss of alcohol, emptiness, and violence. The occasional _“accidents_ ” had escalated to flat-out beatings, and tonight, I realized it would all come to an end. The minute she had pushed me down the stairs, sending me crashing through the glass door below, it was over.

> “Therese… Antoni…”

I heard low mumblings in the familiar voice that had come to foster a sick and unnatural fear in me. I told myself the lie I had lived by since my father’s quick exit —my mother had died that day. I would remember her for who she was, not the grief-crazed murderer wearing her head. Tears flooded my eyes. I felt everything, but I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move. I wanted to sleep and to not hurt anymore, not like this. Shouting woke me again. I listened to my mother’s voice, the click of the front door closing, blowing cold air on the bare skin of my side. My shirt was still wrinkled around my middle from the fall. The words made no sense. The questions floating to me came from a voice I didn’t recognise. Her replies were suddenly uncertain. The aggressor was gone, and I opened my eyes just in time to watch her become the victim. I don’t know where _SHE_ came from,how _SHE_ found me, or how _SHE_ knew the exact right time to walk into my life. A woman stood in our entryway. Soft blond hair hanging loose around her shoulders, and a blackform-fitting dress riding dangerously high up her strong thighs. A smooth leather jacket moulded to her slender frame like a second skin. I had no time to wonder who _SHE_ was, but I knew from the minute _SHE_ appeared like an omen in my darkest moment _SHE_ was _SOMEONE_.

Grey eyes looked down at me, and I looked back, though I could not prevent my own closing. I shivered against an invisible cold and the action was exhausting. The warm pool I had been lying in was cooling and everything told me to close my eyes. It was curiosity that kept me alive, it was _HER_ , and those haunting grey eyes, that glistened so brightly, cold and metallic, rivalling the most excellently polished suit of armour. The sclera that surrounded them were pristine, untouched by red. They were pure. Cold. But they were beautiful. I was a captive audience, powerless to look away from her, and I saw it all.

Full lips parted, and I watched in awe andalmost complete detachment. The way she moved was animalistic, fingers twisting roughly into my mother’s hair — then yanking it back with a loud snap as _SHE_ turned to me. My mother’s body falling to the floor with a heavy thud as _SHE_ tossed her away as if she was merely a wooden puppet. _HER_ lips were marred crimson in my abuser’s blood. _SHE_ was beautiful and _SHE_ was terrible, this killer, my angel of death. I wondered with the last of my strength if _SHE_ had come to save me or just to take me away. By now, they were the same thing. Her eyes as she crouched beside me were the perfect shade of winter grey. The colours swirled like dove feathers, not the albino kind, but the ones with a hue so softly grey that they could have been pencil drawn. Like new ash, spinning into their own constellations. Suddenly, I was glad this beautiful killer would be the last thing I’d see. Those strange eyes peered down at me, perfectly shaped eyebrows arched, and I stared back up at _HER_. The only sound breaking the silence was my own rasping, rattling breaths. This was it. Somehow, I couldn’t feel sadness. Looking into those swirling eyes, light-headed, I couldn’t feel anything. I sucked a gurgling breath through my blood stained lips as I watched my mother’s blood drip down _HER_ chin. Somehow, I forced out my last words.

> _“THANK YOU."_


	2. Ghost of me

**I WOKE UP ALONE** , adrift, lying warm on the old threadbare sofa in my empty living room. The nightmare still felt so real. The taste of metallic rust in-between my teeth from my busted lip. The large shard of glass sticking out of my thigh at an odd angle. The smell of my mother’s sullied breath as it smacked hard aghast my face when she grabbed me at the top of the stairs, every bump on the way down, and the killer with the grey eyes.

The thought of _HER_ stayed with me, following me around the empty house as I walked from room to room, lost. My mother, or at least her broken body, was gone. I found the glass shards that had littered the floor in the trashcan beside our back door, the only proof all this was real. Stiff feet took me back to the sofa where I had woken, my own slender fingers softly picking at the old comforter that must of been taken from my bed and draped around my body. It seemed as if I was looking down at myself, watching from a distance. Yet the panic I knew should follow this realization remained absent.

_My mother was dead._

She’d been murdered by an angle with eyes that moved like something out of the science fiction novels lining my bookshelf. I looked down at my arms, my legs that ran pale below my blood-stained pyjama shorts. Nothing hurt. There were no bruises, no scars, just my skin, soft and pale, unblemished. The impact of every stair came back to me, and I flinched. The agony of glass tearing into my skin, lodging into my thigh, my back, my arms crashed over me, a tsunami that stole my breath away and finally instilled some of the panic I knew I should be feeling. I was alive. Inexplicably unharmed after what seemed like certain death.

_My mother was dead,_

gone, and though it meant the beatings would stop, staring vacantly at the rain-streaked windowpane, my quite relief was short lived. I had a new problem. Without her disability allowance, without her, how would I pay the already grossly overdue bills that littered the kitchen countertops? How would I keep the house, finish high school and escape to university? I had no answers to my own questions, instead focusing on the genital tapping of rain drumming lightly against glass, I was content to study its dirty streaks as they painted down my windowpane. I thought I sensed _HER_. It was ridiculous, but those grey eyes haunted me. _SHE_ was all but palpable in my mind, those liquid irises, a winters storm, the blood making crimson rivers down _her_ chin. I’d watched _her_ kill my mother, but _she_ fascinated me, grossly so. If not for _HER_ , my mother would have been the murderer merely hours ago, and the victim…

…I couldn’t finish the thought.

Everything inside me pulled and strained, and I ached to be close to _HER_ again, to look into those storm cloud eyes, and know _her_. Somehow, I felt like I already did, or had. Morbid curiosity was killing me, as I fumbled to pull on my weathered jeans and old oversized sweater with shaking fingers and I tried to ready myself to do what I always did—to carry on.

**___________ ___________**

**THE SILVERY MIST** licked at every surface, hugging my shoulders and grabbing at my trouser legs as I made my way to school. I existed, living between the cracks my death—my almost death—had left in my version of reality. I studied my scuffed Chuck Taylor’s, as my feet carried me forward, still filthy from my time spent looking for my mother’s body, in the backyard. I had looked for answers yet found none. Part of me was afraid if I did, my greed for knowledge would somehow cause _HER_ to disappear forever. but _SHE_ was gone, and so I clung to _her_ in my thoughts as I walked.

I felt _HER_ presence again. As if _she_ was close to me, watching over me, thinking of me. It made no sense, but sense wasn’t what I searched for. The intensity with which _she_ had looked down at me, the way _she_ had saved me without a moment’s hesitation, _HER_ nearness…Of course, I had drawn my own conclusions. The neck biting led me immediately to believe _she_ was a vampire—if such a thing existed. Yet _she_ had broken through the door before the sun was fully dead behind the woody skyline of our quiet little New Hampshire town. When _she_ looked down at me, I didn’t see fangs. I just couldn’t rectify something so beautiful, the thing that had saved me, with something so…dark, any more than I could understand my own rose-tinted view of this murderer.

**___________ ___________**

**THE WORLD CONTINUED** to move around me as I made my way through the crowded lunch hall to my usual seat, alone. I sat down, flicking absentmindedly at the tape that peeled from its table corner, my favourite book splayed open in front of me, and although my eyes lingered on its worn pages, I wasn’t reading. I loved Romeo and Juliet, and I hated it. A love like that seemed to belong exactly there, in a storybook, yet the way it was all lost, all twisted and broken and tragic in the end—that seemed more like real life.

The chair directly in front of me was suddenly drawn back, the plastic leg bottoms grinding on the old concreate floors, I jumped. The cafeteria was loud, but I wasn’t expecting the sound. Nobody ever sat with me, and that was the way I had come to like it. A girl I had never seen before stood in front of me. She was beautiful. Tall, willowy and a face cut right from the pages of magazines the boys would ogle at during recces, left me wondering how she had stumbled into my humble presence.

> _“Hi…Would it be okay if I sat with you?”_

The way she spoke was strange, I couldn’t place her accent to either coast, but the request seemed genuine enough. I nodded, blushing furiously before I looked back to my book. She must be new, that’s what I told myself. She was new, and her presence would be a short-term inconvenience and novelty in equal parts, until she realized I was not the go-to lunch crowd if you wanted to be anybody at this High School. I could feel her watching me. Discomfort crawled down my spine.

> _“My name’s_ _Daniella_ _Aird. But um…you can call me Dannie if you like?”_

I was forced to look up again.

> _“Therese… Therese Belivet.”_

I paused, waiting for her to speak, but she just looked at me with brown eyes that seemed too dull for the rest of her face. I cleared my throat.

> _“Are you new?”_

She nodded, twirling her fork with pale slender fingers, pushing the salad on her plate into a neat little mound with a finesse that seemed misplaced on such a menial task. I had no idea what else to say, so I went back to pretending to read.

> _“Romeo and Juliet?”_

I just wanted her to leave so I could go back to thinking about _HER_. Ever polite, I looked up and gave her a half a smile and a nod.

> _“Do you like tragedy, Therese?”_

It was an odd question. She watched me with an intensity that made me want to shrink.

> _“I think it’s realistic... l_ _ife is tragic, love is never straightforward… Or least not from what I’ve seen,”_

I added quickly, not wanting to say too much on a subject I new so little of.

> _“There’s light and dark in everything, the story doesn’t fall into the light for the sake of a happy ending. Things end badly, imperfectly… Like I said… Realistic.”_

Realising I was talking a lot, or at least a lot for me, I gave an apologetic shrug and took a token stab at one of the soggy fries on my plate. I didn’t even bother to raise it to my lips. Daniella…Dannie seemed pleased with my answer.

> _“I agree, it takes a certain kind of person to be able to find beauty in tragedy, to see light in darkness.”_

Her voice was rich and smooth, velvety. She was obviously American, but I still had no idea where she must have moved from to come here, and it seemed rude to ask. I liked her, through, the way she spoke about the book, the fact she had spoken to me about anything at all.

> _“I like Greek mythology and vampire books.”_

The mention of the V word made my blood run cold with guilt as I offered her what I was sure was a watery smile.

> _“Some of the myths are interesting, the stories of all the gods and goddesses,”_

I agreed with a nod.

> _“I don’t know about the vampire stuff, I prefer to stick with more…realistic things.”_

I had to say it. Somehow, I had to defend myself from the unspoken accusation that I was a liar, that I knew too much. Danny arched one perfectly sculpted eyebrow, and I wished I had never spoken, though her expression quickly spread into a wide grin.

> _“You think it’s impossible they exist somewhere out there? Or are you just scared?”_

Her tone was even, and unreadable as anything more than just casual chit-chat, curiosity, but it made me nervous. I wanted to get up and leave, to protect my thoughts from this girl who seemed to have an unnervingly accurate feel of them.

> _“I’m not scared. I mean… If they did exist, they’re just people with a specific diet I guess. Some people eat dogs, doesn’t mean every dog should be afraid of a person…”_

My metaphor was tactless, and it made me cringe, heat crawling up my neck to colour my cheeks a little deeper.

> _“I… I don’t eat dogs, I love dogs…it’s just…the same thing, you know? I don’t know….”_

I hoped she would drop it. My excuse for an answer seemed to amuse her, as she continued to twirl her fork between her fingers with a dexterity that forced me to watch the movement until she spoke again.

> _“For my next class, I have politics”_

Her avid smile was infectious, and though I wasn’t so sure how the washed-out politics course the school taught was anything at all to be excited for, I nodded in recognition.

> _“Therese, could you show me the way? I don’t want to be a nuisance, so…”_

I was already shaking my head.

> _“It’s right on the way to my English class, it’s no problem.”_

Eyes followed us, as we began to weave our way foot traffic of the cafeteria room. We were polar-opposites. She was tall, taller than most of the students we passed, and her perfectly proportioned features and smooth golden hair that ran rivers down her back turned head after head as we walked side by side down the corridor. I was shorter, my dark hair twisted into a thick braid, my clothes plain, the jeans and T-shirt that were my regulation school wardrobe meant to draw as little attention as humanly possible. I paused as best I could outside the doorway of room 209, though elbows and backpacks continually bumped my back, my shoulders, as hard bodies continued to push by us. Nobody seemed to run into Dannie that way, but Dannie hadn’t spent the last four years at this school making herself invisible.

> _“Thank you, Therese, meeting you has been a pleasure.”_

I nodded, desperately trying to keep the heat out of my cheeks—a constant struggle.

> _“Me too. I’ll…see you.”_

With one last smile, I left, disappearing back into the sea of students, heading toward English, and back toward my invisibility. The last 24 hours was so full of the unexpected: my lunch companion, my mother’s murder, her killer…taking a long deep breath, I settled back into my seat and gazed at the empty chalkboard, as Mr. McElroy talked about the themes in a book I had read close to twenty times.


	3. The Murder & Me

**THERE WERE A** hundred other things I should be doing on a Sunday night. The unpaid bills formed a now neat stack of doom on the kitchen counter top, and I didn’t dare to open any of them, instead retreating to my room for another night of pretending to read when, really, I was thinking about _HER_.

A loud crash from downstairs made me jump.

The panic bubbled and spat like a cluster of spark plugs in my abdomen. It froze me in place, perched on the end of my bed, a book still in my hands. I knew the sound. Somebody was in the house. I had to hide. Call the police. Climb out the window and run screaming to the neighbour, though he smoked so much weed I’d hardly doubt he would be conative enough to help. My heart pounded painfully against my ribcage, hammering fast. I had to hide, but my body refused to move, fear-frozen as I heard staggering footsteps, the crash of a glass breaking in the kitchen. _My Mother._ She was my first thought. Maybe, somehow, she had survived. Somehow, she was back for me now. My hand covered my mouth with a soft slap. I wanted to run until my body was empty – put as much distance between myself and those jarring footsteps climbing up my stairs. I had to move. Now! My legs exploded into violent motion, my half-laced Chuck Taylors thudding loudly against the carpet as I ran across the hall and into the bathroom. I slammed the door shut and locked it behind me—that was one of the first changes I had made after my mother’s death merely two nights ago. I looked at the little lock now, the alloy still fresh and bright against the faded paint and dirty tile of the bathroom. I silently pleaded it would be enough to save me. The room span in circles as my knees fell to the floor with a hard smack, I felt sick. The footsteps were coming. Faster now, desperate, though the cadence was all wrong, they were hurt, I could almost feel that they were hurt, a wounded animal. I was in the tub, pressed back feebly behind the shower curtain, my shaking hands still cupped over my mouth, and I wanted _HER_. I wanted _HER_ to be _HERE_ again, to save me again. The door handle jerked and rattled. My little lock was holding fast, my final defiance, and I wished I’d tightened the screws more, bought a bigger one, but it was all I had now.

A blood-curdling scream filled the air.

It stole the oxygen from my chest until I tasted the very bottom of my lungs. It pierced my mind and blanched my vision into a muted, faded television scene. I watched the door, the last barrier between us, buckle in on itself until the lock gave in with loud snap.

It was _HER_.

 _SHE_ was here, and _SHE_ was hurt. Tangles of blond hair clung to her face in rivers, soaked from rain. I tripped out of the tub, stumbling towards her, my stomach seemed to fall through the floor as I crawled closer. She was covered in blood; dark gashes ran deep down her body, the now browning liquid drizzling down her limbs like so much rain down a window pane. A deep crack sliced down her pale cheek, almost as if she was made of stone. I tasted my own tears as, fear-drunk, I reached for her. To my surprise, she reached back. We were kindred flames, opposite poles, and she pulled me to her while I pulled her closer. She was safety. She came in my darkest moments to save me, my lifeboat in the cold dark waters I had long since learned to swim in, though I knew I wouldn’t have survived much longer. I knew _HER_ , I could feel _HER_ , her presence made something burn bright inside my chest. I ached to speak her name, to see how it tasted on my tongue.

Cold fingers locked around my wrist in a vice grip, dragging me forward, closing the last of the distance between us. She was stronger than me, unnaturally strong. Her broken body lurched forward, desperate, she lunged for me, negligently twisting my wrist up to her mouth in one sharp twist;

Then everything went quiet.

A dull ache bloomed in my wrist where her plush lips closed around my skin. I could feel the blood in my veins pull, lurching forward like the tide. This was what she needed and that feeling filled me up, beyond my fear, beyond the strange pull or the way my fingers were alarmingly cold. _SHE_ was here, looking at me, and I stared back at her, tears slipping down my chin and landing on the cold tiled floor, and they felt like relief; like the first rain after a scorching dry summer.

 _HER_ mouth wasn’t flush against me, but I knew she was drinking my blood. Somehow, the knowledge didn’t scare me. I lay there anesthetized by her presence, a silent audience as those grey eyes began to dance for me. Feathers swirled in and out of their own constellations of every shade of grey. She watched my face intensely, emitting soft little noises of approval into the silence. I flinched when it was over. The way she jerked my wrist away from her mouth hurt, but I didn’t make a sound. Everything started to move, the room around her, the storms in her eyes, circling, dancing. I tried to cling to the present, to _HER_ , watching as she raised a finger to her mouth and pressed it hard against a spot on my wrist that stung like a tiny speck of hot oil that spat from a cooking pan. I wanted to ask her what she was doing, but I couldn’t find the words, instead I continued to watch. _HER_ face was almost impossible to read, though I sensed she was uncomfortable, or at I least thought I did, but what did I know about her? She was so different from the single dimensioned thing she had become in my dreams, so vibrant, so vivid, and so intense as she loomed over me.

Eventually, she lowered my arm to rest against the cold tiled floor, moving her body gracefully to stand.

> _“Don’t…”_

My voice was too pitchy, too laden with panic as I called out to _HER_. I wanted so desperately for her to stay, to remain close to me. _SHE_ paused, her eyes tumultuous, and I felt the war inside her. I desperately wanted her to stay, but I didn’t dare to ask her again. The way she lowered herself down beside me was slow, repentant, and I waited. The soft pads of her fingers skirted across my stomach as she slid her arm around my waist. She settled her head on the tiled floor, and I turned mine accordingly.

All the wounds were gone now, her skin, smoothly falling over a bone symmetry money can't buy, the white creamy tone of her skin reminded me of whipped milk as moonlight shone through the dusty bathroom window and on to her. She was flawless, though still stained with blood. I reached up without thinking, the tips of my fingers running over where the crack in her cheek had been. To my surprise, she leaned into my touch and pressed her body closer against mine. For a split-second, the gravity of the situation dawned on me. I was here, and she was holding me, the woman who had killed my mother. Her embrace was cool, but it filled me up with so much warmth I felt flushed, and as the adrenaline subsided, I found myself breathing easier than I had in a long time. There was no denying she was terrible, my blood still drying at the corners of her ample lips; but with her, I was safe.

I let my eyes roam over your her, felt hard muscles flex and twitch as she held me. Butterflies danced on the edges of my ribs and tumbled down into my stomach when she reached up to touch me. The soft pads of her fingers were cool against my skin, as they ran softly over my cheek.

Questions loomed, threatening to spill from my lips, but I held them at bay. The intensity with which she watched me made me feel exposed, seen, and for once, I didn’t mind. One cool hand cupped my cheek, and she looked at me as if I was her most precious possession. There was something about her gaze that told me more than words could ever describe. Never in my life had I been able to sense someone’s mood like this, to taste what they felt without words—if this was even real or just a fabrication I had made.

> _“Are you afraid?”_

Her voice was deep, rich and dark like black coffee, low and heavy, and I almost answered no by default. Somehow, my every answer felt weighted, important, and for a second, I was reminded of Dannie, the girl at lunch with all her questions.

> _“No.”_

I held my gaze, refusing to look away, because her eye contact wasn’t the uncomfortable affair I found the rest of the world caused me. She laughed, and the sound was so dark that, for a moment, my answer changed, yet she held me still, gentle.

> _“You will be, eventually.”_

Her tone was final, absolute. She hid her sadness well, but I found myself shaking my head, even though what she’d said was true. She ran her tongue slowly over her lips, and I sensed the moment to talk had passed. I watched my fingers graze delicately across her cheek again, marvelling for a moment at how effortless my reaction was around her. 

> _“The things you’ve done, they scare me. But… you don’t scare me, I’m not afraid of you.”_
> 
> _“Aren’t they the same?”_

I could taste her trepidation, feel so much was riding on my answer, yet it was easy to deliver the truth, and my reply came out on a soft half-sigh.

> _“No.”_

We lay there, still, beside each other on the cold tiled floor, the murderer, and me. I played with her hair, her eyes narrowing slightly, as she considered me, leaning into my touch. Everything else slipped away until we were all that was left, until all my worry and all her torment was gone, and we were peaceful.

> _“Go to sleep now.”_

She whispered. 

> _“Will you come back?”_

I tried to keep the desperation out of my words, I already knew she had to leave. I could almost feel her emotionally peeling away from me, pulling back from me, from our little haven of peace lying on the cold moonlight lit tiles. It made no sense, but I could feel her changing, that heavy armour she wore, jig-soring its way back into place, this soft side of her was slipping away, fast. She didn’t answer for a long moment, her expression torn, then suddenly her body moved, fluid like soft silk over me, her face hovering inches from mine. I could have sworn in that moment the feathered specks of grey capsulated in those grey eyes became impossibly more vivid.

Her face move closer and I watched her eyes until my own fell closed.

I’d always thought the metaphor about fireworks was…well, a metaphor, but when she kissed me, I felt them, exploding in my chest, on my lips, in the pit of my stomach. She pressed against me, light at first, tentative, though it faded quickly. The emotional feedback loop between us forced my lips to part, so I could taste the moment, steal as much of her as she’d give. Her tongue touched the inside of my lips, but the slick of it, cool and smooth, sent heat plummeting through my veins. I knew she felt it too, and soon after, she pulled back, just barely.

> _“Tell me your name?”_

My request was breathy and my lips tingled, still reliving that perfect first kiss, as she leaned down again and quickly gave me my second. I could feel her restraint slipping, as her tongue pushed itself between my lips a little further this time.

> _“Carol.”_

She left the word against my ear. Her breath on the suddenly sensitive skin there made my body burn. She pulled herself away from me inhumanly fast and was gone.

I didn’t even hear her walk down the stairs or out of the door. 

> _“Carol…”_

Her name tasted holy on my lips, tasting so very faintly of whiskey and rust.


End file.
